a comfort in knowing that there was one in it to whom she could turn in need.  For she felt that she could turn to Starling; he alone, apparently, had measured the full depth of her trouble; nay, had silently predicted it from the beginning.  And to-day, as he stood before her, she had an almost irresistible impulse to speak.  Just a word-a human word would have been such a help to her!  And how ridiculous the social law that kept the old man standing there, impassive, respectful, when this existed between them!  Her tragedy was his tragedy; not in the same proportion, perhaps; nevertheless, he had the air of one who would die of it.

And she?  Would she die?  What would become of her?  When she thought of the long days and months and years that stretched ahead of her, she felt that her soul would not be able to survive the process of steady degradation to which it was sure to be subjected.  For she was a prisoner:  the uttermost parts of the earth offered no refuge.  To-day, she knew, was to see the formal inauguration of that process.  She had known torture, but it had been swift, obliterating, excruciating.  And hereafter it was to be slow, one turn at a time of the screws, squeezing by infinitesimal degrees the life out of her soul.  And in the end—­most fearful thought of all—­in the end, painless.  Painless!  She buried her head in her arms on the little desk, shaken by sobs.

How she fought that day to compose herself, fought and prayed!  Prayed wildly to a God whose help, nevertheless, she felt she had forfeited, who was visiting her with just anger.  At half-past four she heard the carriage on the far driveway, going to the station, and she went down and walked across the lawn to the pond, and around it; anything to keep moving.  She hurried back to the house just in time to reach the hall as the omnibus backed up.  And the first person she saw descend, after Hugh, was Mrs. Kame.

“Here we are, Honora,” she cried.  “I hope you’re glad to see us, and that you’ll forgive our coming so informally.  You must blame Hugh.  We’ve brought Adele.”

The second lady was, indeed, none other than Mrs. Eustace Rindge, formerly Mrs. Dicky Farnham.  And she is worth—­even at this belated stage in our chronicle an attempted sketch, or at least an attempted impression.  She was fair, and slim as a schoolgirl; not very tall, not exactly petite; at first sight she might have been taken for a particularly immature debutante, and her dress was youthful and rather mannish.  Her years, at this period of her career, were in truth but two and twenty, yet she had contrived, in the comparatively brief time since she had reached the supposed age of discretion, to marry two men and build two houses, and incidentally to see a considerable portion of what is known as the world.  The suspicion that she was not as innocent as a dove came to one, on closer inspection, as a shock:  her eyes were tired, though not from loss of sleep; and her manner—­how shall it be